Poetry can often be a polarizing topic to teach with half your students grinning from ear to ear, ready to show off their lyrical prowess, and the other half staring down in dread. I recently finished up poetry units with my tenth and twelfth graders and there were a few warm-up activities I tried that I would highly recommend to help your students see themselves as poets and even the ones who were dreading the process will get on board!
You’ve likely facilitated a story chain in your classroom, where students pass a paper around, adding one line at a time to create a story, but have you tried a poetry chain? To facilitate this activity I gave each student a piece of paper and asked them to write one line down that would start a poem. Then students passed their papers clockwise until they received their paper back. Depending on how many students you have, you will end up with numerous poems, ready for students to recite to the class. In my experience, some students wrote funny lines while others wrote more serious ones, but all of the poems ended up sounding poetic and interesting – even the funny ones, so don’t worry if your students get silly! Creative expression is the name of the game and your students will enjoy hearing all of the poetry they created.
I used the “First Line Face-off” activity after seeing it on Instagram and it was a big hit with my students. Essentially, you give each of your students a stack of books and ask them to decide which one had the best first line. These lines get added to a bracket system where they are voted on to determine the ultimate best first line. I decided to try this activity with song lyrics and called it “Song Lyric Supreme.” I asked my students to add their favorite song lyric to the bracket and this was no easy task, as many of them informed me of how “painful” it was to decide. When the voting started, we mulled over word choice and rhythm, and every student was engaged in the decision process. You could also do this activity with first lines from poems, but I went with song lyrics as I thought it might be more accessible for my students and something they were more familiar with.
As a fun warm-up to get students energized and in the poetic mindframe, I split my class into two groups and provided each with strips of paper that contained the lines to a poem. When I said “go” each team placed the papers in the order they thought they belonged. If a team completed the poem, I would check to let them know if it was correct or not. If it wasn’t correct they would keep going. The first team to correctly complete the poetry puzzle were the winners. In this case they won the ability to go to lunch five minutes early, but you can come up with any prize you like!
The next time you teach poetry, I hope you try one of these activities to get your students thinking (and writing) like poets! Let us know in the blog comments or on Instagram if you’ve tried any of these activities!
